The Irish Soil Moisture Observation Network - ISMON

Real-time soil moisture measurements are essential to manage climate change adaptation and reduce nutrient losses and greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and forestry. Soil moisture status influences crop growth, run-off, groundwater recharge and atmospheric dynamics. In this paper we present the Irish Soil Moisture Observation Network (ISMON) as the integrator of several long-term environmental observational networks (AGMET, COSMOS UK - NI, Teagasc, NASCO and Terrain-AI), all of which include several different methodologies for measuring soil moisture at field scale. AGMET is installing novel cosmic ray neutron sensors which can provide landscape averaged soil moisture estimates and NASCO and Terrain AI are using Time Domain Reflectometry probes. Such networks are seen as bridging the scale gap between field-based measurements and satellite-derived soil moisture products and are important in monitoring key biogeochemical processes that vary rapidly in time and space. In the initial phase of the implementation of AGMET network, the current distribution of the stations in relation to the other networks are presented, with the aim being to cover the most relevant soil type, land cover, and climate regimes. It is envisioned that the ISMON will grow further to complete any current shortcomings in the set-up, and feed directly into similar international soil moisture monitoring networks.